AverageAmericanGuy:Once you stop worrying about the little things life gets so much easier, and it's all little things.

The problem is that we live in America, and because of this, pundits on the right like to glorify the unintellectual, slack-jawed yokels who actually believe the email with 50 FW: headers infront of the subject that came from Grandma Powatee in Bucksnort, Tennessee as "Educated Voters" and promote the idea that they should vote based on what they read in a chain email, rather than doing research on the actual purported event.

In addition (Thanks FARK.com book for giving me this), the Media likes to give "Equal time to nutjobs", the Fair and Balanced principle that Fox News likes to doublespeak. So because of this, these idiots get soapboxes to spew their stupidity from. Think Obama's a secret commie Muslim and others need to do their research? Yeah. Some people might laugh at you. But many more of the Baby Boomer generation are going to see it and say "SEE! I knew it! If the media's reporting it, there must be some truth to it"

There was a time I used to respond to these emails by reprimanding the sender and clarifying for everyone on the CC list that these emails were either hoaxes, spam, or chain letters that ought to be deleted as soon as they were delivered to your inbox and not forwarded to everyone in your address book.

That time is passed. Now those senders get a trip straight to the spam folder.

Once you stop worrying about the little things life gets so much easier, and it's all little things.

Now, when some idiot on facebook decides to copy-paste a chain email about how Obama is just seconds away from taking our constitutional rights away to play soldier and own Colt Ruger Kalishnakov FN Arms M4A2-AK-97AlphaMod0Mark3s with Laser Scopes and attached NVG Grenade Launchers, well...

AverageAmericanGuy:There was a time I used to respond to these emails by reprimanding the sender and clarifying for everyone on the CC list that these emails were either hoaxes, spam, or chain letters that ought to be deleted as soon as they were delivered to your inbox and not forwarded to everyone in your address book.

I actually had an old friend who used to blast these things out with regular and gay abandon. I pointed out to her that A) I'm not Christian so all this 'god light' bollocks is wasted on me B) I run my own mail server, receiving this shiat does actually cost me money. C) As someone who worked in IT for years she should be well aware that these things are themselves malicious and designed to expend system resources on pointless tasks.

Now I was actually polite about it I didn't just wade it. The response I got was... interestingly worded. There is now apparently a prayer circle in the Midlands dedicated to asking God to smite me.

OTOH with her batshiat insanity out the way it has been literally years since I received one of these things and their God seems perfectly content to let the Atheist heathen live. Which is nice.

What's worse is when the mail contains a link to the exact Snopes page debunking the hoax, with the caption "Confirmed by Snopes."

I do find it interesting how these mails mutate over time (I'm an email administrator so I see a lot of these passing through). They even merge with other mails to produce new hoaxes. It's like a little rumor ecosystem.

AverageAmericanGuy:There was a time I used to respond to these emails by reprimanding the sender and clarifying for everyone on the CC list that these emails were either hoaxes, spam, or chain letters that ought to be deleted as soon as they were delivered to your inbox and not forwarded to everyone in your address book.

That time is passed. Now those senders get a trip straight to the spam folder.

Once you stop worrying about the little things life gets so much easier, and it's all little things.

An interesting thing happened in this election. A very conservative family member started forwarding these emails. Not to say 'look what terrible thing Obama's doing now' but to ask 'is this true? Can you find the real story for me?'There are cracks in the Republican facade.

red5ish:If you give your private email address to the wrong people you're doing it wrong.Maintaining multiple email accounts that have specific purposes handles this sort of problem nicely.

I'm glad you can tell ahead of time which contacts will turn out to be a brain-dead email hoax forwarders, and are able to keep your personal email address out of the hands of your personal relatives. Sounds like a winning method for you to use.

stratagos:The people who need this are the people least likely to install it - after all, it's obviously a (right/left) wing tool to keep people from learning the Truth. Silly sheeple, They Who Control The Media are simply adding another tool to keep you acting like little happy drones.

Fortunately, the people who need this the most could probably get it in the form of a hacker or a virus.

AverageAmericanGuy:There was a time I used to respond to these emails by reprimanding the sender and clarifying for everyone on the CC list that these emails were either hoaxes, spam, or chain letters that ought to be deleted as soon as they were delivered to your inbox and not forwarded to everyone in your address book.

That time is passed. Now those senders get a trip straight to the spam folder.

Once you stop worrying about the little things life gets so much easier, and it's all little things.

I correct and reprimand every time, without exception, and I follow up on the "well, that's just like your opinion man" whargarble with "These are facts. You are not entitled to your own facts." I am a complete asshole about it, even with people I love. The last one I got had me castigating my own mother for forwarding along one that told people not to give to the Red Cross, which I found grossly irresponsible as well as annoying.

At first, I was busy. But what I've discovered is that I don't get them sent to me any more.

ThinkingGuy:What's worse is when the mail contains a link to the exact Snopes page debunking the hoax, with the caption "Confirmed by Snopes."

THIS. Ohmygod, this so much. A friend of mine sends me stuff like this, and when I finally told him (at the end of one of my debunkings) to quit sending me stuff that wasn't true he responded that we could "agree to disagree" or somesuch. I was like WTF, dude. I don't mind you having a different political opinion on things than me but at least don't base it on LIES.

OTOH he's not just blind to the forward email lies. He literally can't even surf porn because he'll uncontrollably click on the most flashy thing on the page, convinced it's a real link, and his computer will be reduced to something that needs a factory reset within 24 hours. I'm surprised he hasn't sent money off to Nigeria yet.

Apparently I'm not the only one that has a crazy tin foil hat wearing uncle. He forwards this crap to my folks and then I get sent this shiat from them. I've told them that most of the crap being sent by him is utter crap and easily debunked with a quick google search, but alas, my folks are old.

I checked Snopes's pages on urban legends related to President George W. Bush and to President Barack H. Obama. The latter President was the subject of more than twice as many urban legends, and the ration of false to true urban legends was substantially higher as well.

Right-leaning individuals seem much more susceptible to treating false or misleading claims without any incredulity. I suspect that this is related to the strong correlation between conservatism and religious faith.